Template talk:SLINav

I am wondering, should we include the small variations icons such as: and  (Flipped Images)  and  (No-Belt vs Belt) Eeb3 (talk) 08:05, 25 April 2016 (CDT)
 * As being still the same, and show only one variation (as currently).
 * Or as being still the same but show both variations.
 * Or each variations is different/seperate entry, no matter how 'slight'?


 * Ah, I wanted to ask the same thing, as they recently introduced several other flipped images. Am I right in assuming that they are currently treated as "similar looking", and are therefore included? In the case of Spock's Tricorder, apparently opted for the naming convention , and grouped them in the same SLINav - is that the way to go?
 * If yes, then in the case of Kolinahr Text vs. The Teaching of Surak Book (=flipped version), the images of the latter should probably be renamed as  as well. --Crunch (talk) 18:43, 27 May 2016 (CDT)


 * In the case "no-belt vs. belt", it is currently integrated into the same SLI, but pages with a belt have a footnote saying it differs from the SLI base form. However, there is a similar problem between these two:

vs. I did combine them, in the same manner as belt/no-belt, but removed it again (or was that accidental, due to using a new template for the page (I copied from Writing PADD (ENT), which apparently used outdated formatting)?). --Crunch (talk) 21:02, 28 May 2016 (CDT)


 * In my mind, it's called Similar Looking Items, so any icon that uses any part of another icon should be linked together, even it has a minor change (clothing color stripe, belt, stylus, etc) or if it's flipped. I don't ever notice right away that an icon is flipped. I would look at Writing PADD (DS9) and say "yeah, that's a Poetry icon", even though it has a stylus where Poetry does not. Since there are so many icons that look the similar, players get confused (I do quite often). Eventually, I can go through and rename the files with 'ItemNameFlipRarity'. It's not really a priority with all the other additions, cleaning, template changes, and fix-up that needs to be done. I watch the 'Recently Changed' list for changes and new pages, and normally verify the information to be consist. For example, Crunch, you made the new page for the Writing PADD (DS9), but named it (DSN). All other DS9 disambiguation pages are DS9. It's a little thing, but again it's about consistency. I went through and modified the image, page, and references from DSN to DS9 - and it was an old item template so I replaced it and forgot to put the link back at the top to the Writing PADD disambiguation page. I follow behind a lot of people to do the clean-up of graphics, coding, spacing, etc.
 * Anyway, this is my thinking, and more crew and items are going to be added. Everyone is doing a great job with new templates and implementing changes. Thank you to all. Let me know if you want to change anything with the SLI. Jello (talk) 21:45, 28 May 2016 (CDT)

Possible Rules for what is "Similar"
Possibly maybe some rules on what is considered to be similar (to be concise in the future): At which point, we will put the variations of similar icons into the SLINav as well, Eeb3 (talk) 11:51, 17 June 2016 (CDT)
 * If the images were turned grey-scale, they would be indistinguishable. (7 of 9 vs T'Pol's suit)
 * If the images were flipped/rotated, they would be indistinguishable. (Tricorder vs Named Tricorders)
 * If the images have a small addition compared to a base image. (Poetry vs Writing PADD (TNG))
 * "If the images were turned grey-scale..." Does this include all color changes? For example, what about Kali-falCommon.png vs. PruneJuiceCommon.png, or the new Poisoned Drink PoisonedDrinkBasic.png vs. ChampagneUncommon.png? (I vote 'yes').


 * This would also mean grouping these, I guess: StarfleetUniformPatternBasic.pngStarfleetDiplomacyUniformTNGBasic.pngStarfleetMedicineUniformTNGBasic.pngStarfleetMedicineUniformTNGBasic.png etc. (but *not* the Command and Engineering variants, as they do look different: StarfleetUniformTNGBasic.pngStarfleetSecurityUniformTNGBasic.png) --Crunch (talk) 19:48, 18 June 2016 (CDT)

How similar are Civilian Diplomatic Dress and Civilian Medical Dress? It's the same icon but recoloured. --Samentarchy (talk) 23:52, 27 June 2016 (CDT)
 * Good point. For now I grouped them together, counting this as "a small addition compared to a base image" --Crunch

Reason for using param instead of page detection.
The reason why I had started SLINav with using a param, instead of page detection, would be the amount of time used for matching switch statements. Because what I had read was that while it can handle a lot of switch statements (into 1000s), that they should be kept to about 100's batches, I was going to make it so that it search by first letter, then rest of the word, but couldn't quite figure out how to extract the first letter properly during the time. Currently, I don't know if it would have much of an impact for speed with having all the separate page names now. Before the recent addition, there was appx 160 switch statements, now 160*3 [visual averaging] = 480+ checks now and would be growing as more crew and their Items are added to the game. The one thing that I can think of that could be done to minimize switch statements (for speedyness if it does have an impact), but not have to change the SLINav every time would be to use a keyword first (Example: Drinks, Weapons, Clothing, Uniform, etc, etc), then go by the PageName. Just food for thought. Eeb3 (talk) 23:01, 3 July 2016 (CDT)
 * Generally very good thinking to keep page performance in mind. However, I did check the amount of time required when I converted it, and while it's true that the switch has a LOT more statements now - it's still just that: one...single...switch. And as SLINav is used just about exclusively on item pages, and is called there always ONCE only, the overall impact is still negligible, and much better compared to other templates such as bonus/sp, item, the kinda overgrown triple, or the very expensive (but also very powerful) ItemX.


 * You can look at the source of any Wiki page and scroll down, all transclusion times are broken down and listed in a commented section. Here are a few examples on my machine (but I think the transclusion is done on the server side):


 * Holoprogram: 48ms DropFrom, 47ms SLINav, 43ms Item
 * Wrench (=near the end of the switch statement): 69ms DropFrom, 54ms SLINav, 33ms Item
 * 20th Century Pistol (=the first switch entry): 39ms DropFrom, 38ms SLINav, 34ms Item
 * Civilian Medical Clothing (=page with ItemX): over 1000-2000ms for ItemX (not sure how it's summarized) - SLINav isn't even listed anymore
 * Gangster Spock (=as a typical crew member example): 103ms SACharacter, 70ms SP, 67ms Stars, 39ms Skill
 * The Prodigal Son (=Away Mission page): 600-1500ms DropTest, 97ms Triple, 93ms Item
 * The Art of War (=Episode page): 256ms Triple, 190-370ms Req, 127ms Skill
 * So that SLINav call should be fine, and it eases maintenance by quite a lot (as item pages will never have to be edited again for SLI-related stuff (except exchanging images of course)). And IMHO it isn't even worth trying to split it up into a two-step switch using the first letter or something.


 * (For reference, you can extract the leftmost character with  (=pad an empty string by 1 character, using the parameter itself as a padding pattern). Unfortunately it's not possible to do this for the rightmost character without the String module) --Crunch (talk) 17:20, 4 July 2016 (CDT)